


The Story of Thomas Piper (As Told by Thomas Lynn)

by jmtorres



Category: Fire and Hemlock - Diana Wynne Jones
Genre: Backstory, Established Relationship, F/M, Post-Canon, Yuletide 2005
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-12-25
Updated: 2005-12-25
Packaged: 2017-10-11 20:37:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/116831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jmtorres/pseuds/jmtorres
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is not a true story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Story of Thomas Piper (As Told by Thomas Lynn)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rush_That_Speaks](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rush_That_Speaks/gifts).



Polly said, "Will you tell me how you came to be--Laurel's?" Laurel's _what_ , Polly wasn't sure how to say. Lover? Victim? Sacrifice? She wasn't sure what motivated her to ask, either. She didn't want to think it was jealousy or mere morbid curiosity, but the idea that she would want to know just because she wanted to know more about _him_ didn't occur to her until after the words had left her mouth.

Mr. Lynn--it was still hard for her to call him Tom, no matter how many times he'd said to. He'd started threatening, "If you shan't call me Tom, I'll start calling you Mrs. Lynn instead of Polly, and we'll turn into one of those exceedingly formal couples with twin beds like in a sixties sitcom, who you can't possibly imagine ever having sex." Polly had blushed and said, not looking at him at all, "But we _will_ ," and he said, "Not if you call me Mr. Lynn, we won't. It makes me feel like you're ten years old again."

Tom, then, strange as it was for her to think of him as _Tom_ , Tom frowned and answered, "I'm not sure I should talk about Laurel. What if telling that story lets her snare somebody else? It's a dangerous power we have, you know."

Polly knew. She was fairly sure Laurel had meant it to be a curse, that Tom could never lie, but Polly's getting involved had somehow changed it, made it so Tom could say made-up things, and her too, but they all turned true. It was tempting to make up a story about how they suddenly had a million pounds, but there was still that monkey's paw catch. They might get a million pounds, but it would be insurance or inheritance or something, from someone they loved dying unexpectedly.

Polly said, "All right, then. Tell me the story of how you were never Laurel's, and maybe the next young thing she has her eye on will get away."

Tom smiled crookedly at that. "One can only hope. Very well. When I was sixteen--or when Tan Coul was--or Thomas Piper, because he probably didn't know he was Tan Coul yet when he was sixteen--" He stopped, and sighed. "I'm sorry. I'm not sure how to tell this story."

"I think you can admit that it's you," said Polly. "But--you don't have to if you don't want to."

"Thomas Piper," Tom decided, "was sixteen. He was a skinny, gangly sixteen-year-old, and shy--not the sort of person you would guess would grow up to be any kind of hero, even a pretend one." Polly hit him on the arm. Tom rubbed it ruefully and went on, "The only thing he did that set him apart at all was--do you suppose they have photography in Nowhere?"

Well, they must, Polly supposed, but she could tell he wanted her to say no, and, contrite over having hit him, she humored him. "It sounds too modern," she agreed. "Better make him a painter."

"A painter," Tom said thoughtfully. "Yes, all right. He painted all the time, spent hours wandering around finding things to draw and even _more_ hours in his, his master's studio, bringing his drawings to life with paint. One autumn evening, he was walking through the fields at dusk, looking for subjects, and he saw bales of hay burning. There were people watching, and they seemed unconcerned, so he figured they probably had the fire under control, and he needn't call for help. He sat down and opened up his sketch book and started sketching the scene, because he found the shapes of the flame and the smoke to be--entrancing.

"But one of the people had seen him, and came over to speak to him. She said, 'You shouldn't be here,' which, in retrospect, is a strange thing, that she would have tried to warn me away..." Tom trailed off, thoughtful.

"It was her? Laurel?" Polly asked, surprised that Laurel would have come to speak to him personally. "Was it--Halloween?"

"Yes, but not the one eighteen years ago," Tom said. "Not when they would have--whoever she had before me. This was five years after the last funeral they had held, which makes it thirteen years from the day she met him to the day she meant to--well."

Polly nodded in sympathy, even though she'd never quite figured out _what_ they did to their victims to suck the life out of them. Maybe Tom didn't know either--he'd been divorced from Laurel by the time they'd sacrificed Morton Leroy's wife to her, nine years ago. Met Laurel, married her, divorced her, all inside four years, Polly realized. "She must have made quite an impression on you--on poor Thomas Piper, I mean."

"She was beautiful," Tom said. "Statuesque. He could tell she was older than he, ancient, he thought, at _least_ thirty, but even so, beautiful."

"Like the way I thought of you when I met you," Polly said evilly.

Tom made a noise of startled indignation. "Stop that," he said. "I was nowhere near thirty _or_ ancient, and you know it."

Polly grinned--she did know, even without him doing all the arithmetic just now, but she'd figured out she could get quite a rise out of him, teasing him about it. It was the same as him not wanting her to call him Mr. Lynn. He'd known she'd had a crush on him long before it would have been appropriate for him to feel anything alike in return, and she still made him feel like an old lecher, sometimes. But she didn't want him to, not really. She wanted him to want to love her, and not feel guilty for it. So instead of saying, "I was ten, and you were a grown-up. What did I know?" which would have made him feel worse, she said peaceably, "What happened then?"

"He thought she was telling him off for trespassing," Tom said, clearing his throat, "so he told her he was sorry, and closed up his sketch book, and went away, never knowing how close he'd come to losing himself to her."

"Tom," said Polly, stretching it out to about four times its proper length, because she hadn't expected the story to be _that_ short.

"All right," Tom said, sighing. "The young master Piper said, 'I'm sorry. I didn't mean to trespass,' and she said, 'You shouldn't have made images of things here. They are not for you to see,' and he said, 'I'm sorry,' again, because her beauty made him stammer a bit. He pulled the sketch out of his sketch book and tore it up, and--"

Polly could see sixteen-year-old Tom Lynn pulling film out of his camera, exposing it all, ruining the pictures--but it hadn't happened that way, because the photo he'd taken did exist, had been printed, was up on her wall. "No," she said.

Tom bowed his head. "He took the sketch out of his sketch book, folded it carefully to protect it, and gave it to her," he said. There it was, there was the fatal mistake. One should never give Laurel anything, because she'd take it and twist it to mean something it wasn't meant to mean. "He thought it was a pitiful gift for such a fine lady, but he was still entranced by the smoke, and couldn't bear to destroy the image of it.

"And then he left, and perhaps she let him go because she was startled by the gift, or perhaps she even found it worthy enough to pay for his passage." For some reason, Polly thought of gold coins on the eyes of pagan corpses.

"But she was not satisfied by it," Tom went on, "because she came looking for him at his master's studio, to ask him to paint it for her. She didn't find Thomas there, but she found his brother, who was also studying the art of painting. She convinced Thomas's brother to make a painting from the sketch, and in this way, came to own pieces of them both. But she didn't own all of either, because Thomas had sketched the subject, but not painted it, and his brother had painted it, but not drawn the original. She needed one last piece to own Thomas, whole and entire.

"'Give me a lock of your hair,' she said to Thomas," and Polly's breath caught, because she knew that he had done; it was on the back of the photograph, bound up in whatever curse Laurel had cast on him. But Tom was still telling the story of how Thomas Piper had escaped the fate he hadn't, because he said, "But Thomas, having heard stories of the kinds of magic that could be done with a lock of one's hair, told her no. 'Would you take away my strength?' he asked her, as if he were Samson.

"And she said, 'Then give me a drop of your heart's blood,' and he refused again. 'I would faint at the sight,' he told her, which was probably true," Tom said, which Polly didn't think was true at all--her Tom was very brave, and he'd not fainted when Morton Leroy's shadow monsters came after them, even when they cut him up.

"And she said, 'Then give me a kiss. I can tell that you want to,' and he refused again. 'I am not worthy to touch your lips,' he said, because he was sixteen and prone to that kind of hyperbole." Polly almost laughed, reminded of her own literary efforts at that age.

Tom said, "Having been refused three times, she was defeated, and though she had her painting of fire and hemlock, she never came to own Thomas's soul."

Polly did laugh then, giddy in weird relief for poor, fictional Thomas Piper, glad he'd gotten away. "Give me a kiss," she said in unconscious echo, because she wanted one, wanted to hold him and comfort him, and be comforted by him.

Tom looked at her seriously. "You know you already own me, don't you? It's some kind of rule. You saved my life, so you're responsible for me ever after. And even if you hadn't--I love you, you know."

"I know," said Polly, hot and cold all over. She wasn't used to him saying it yet, and didn't know that she wanted to be _used_ to it, when it was such a thrill. "I just want to kiss you," she said, because she did.

And so Tom kissed her, which made Polly very glad she'd agreed to stop calling him Mr. Lynn.


End file.
